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Glee Recap: Asian F

This episode of Glee was really strong. And it highlighted two underused characters in Glee-verse: Mike and Mercedes. One plot like I loved, the other, I’m sick of. And the winner is *drumroll* the “Other Asian!”

Glee

“Asian F”

Glee Club “booty camp” is rehearsing and Mercedes shows up late acting like a diva, saying she’s so busy with all the extra rehearsals she doesn’t have time to sleep or eat. Mercedes: “When am I supposed to eat?” Santana: “When the rest of us does?” Mercedes: “Like you eat!” Yes, you read that right, Santana is back, ya’ll. Fully on the Glee side without Sue’s knowledge. We shall see how long this lasts. Anyone wanna take bets? BTW, Quinn, looks terrible.

Meanwhile, it looks like Will and Emma are getting super serious. So serious Emma is making a “Bridezilla” box and Will wants to meet her parents. Emma, doesn’t think this is a good idea. Akward.

Speaking of meeting the parents, we meet Mike Chang Sr. who is convinced his son is doing drugs. Either that or he’s distracted by his girlfriend. Mike Chang Jr. got a A- in chemistry and that’s considered an Asian F. Something has to go. First thing? The girlfriend. Then the Glee Club. We get a nice throw back to Season 1 where Finnegan refers to Tina as a vampire again. Love it. Anyway, Mike is feeling overwhelmed and can’t work on the song he was supposed to sing. Tina suggests he should tell his father how he really feels about dancing and singing and that he “can’t hide who he is” and again we get another throwback to Season 1, when change brings up the fact she faked her stutter when they first met her.

Mercedes boyfriend, who’s name I already forgot and who is a terrible terrible actor, tells Mercedes she’s great and shouldn’t be playing nice with her frenemy. Overwhelmed by his support, we get a nice diva-licious performance of “Spotlight.”

Though her performance is…good…it is nothing compared to what Brittany dishes out. Still running for class president, Brittany is HELL BENT on the fact that a girl needs to rule the school for once because the boys have made a mess of things. Then she starts a flash mob singing Beyoncé’s “Who Run The World(Girls) ,” from the hallway into the gym. There’s something about Brittany that is so sexy when she dances. She just oozes cool, it’s hard to believe she’s an “underdog.” Plus, she’s the only girl I know that can pull off boots over softball knee high socks and a leather skort. Yes. Skort. Seriously, what was she wearing? Anyway, that performance was so damn amazing (I mean it even gets Sue dancing) and well-choreographed, I have to watch it again…excuse me.

Elsewhere, Beiste, Emma, and Artie can’t decide between Rachel or Mercedes for the role of Maria so they decide to have a “Maria-Off.” This time Mercedes doesn’t take Rachel’s hug. And Rachel is pissed.

Mike Chang, who looks so stressed and so disappointed in himself for disappointing his father, takes to the dance floor. Harry Shum has some lovely moments and movements in this scene. Especially when he deals with the pressure from his parents. In Asian culture, some parents put a lot of their pressure on their kids to study and get A’s. I am grateful my parents never did that and let me be who I wanted to be. Then Tina comes in and reminds him who he is. And it’s sweet. And then it’s bitter sweet because it wasn’t really her saying it. That moment makes Mike realize he IS DANCE, and dance is him. And thus leads us to his audition of Riff, revealing to the world that this kid is what we call a triple threat. He can dance, act, AND sing. And it was a nice change of pace to see him get to do all three this episode. His performance of “Cool” was fantastic, outstanding, incredible, sexy, and any other amazing adjective you can think of. Glee is on fire tonight!

In a brief, but wonderful vignette – Kurt redeems himself by showing his full on support for Blaine as the role of Tony in the school play. A role I would have betted money on, that Kurt would have thrown a hissy fit if he didn’t get it. I’m glad Kurt came around and supported his man. Makes me think he deserves the great guy that Blaine is.

Mercedes who’s still acting like a diva throws a fit and because she feels like Schue is always picking on her. So she walks out, and Schue says if she leaves, she’s out of Glee. Then Mercedes makes up for her iffy performance, by being Effie (from Dreamgirls). See what I did there? Yeah you did. The way Glee reformatted “It’s All Over,” to fit not only the story but also the characters, was pretty damn amazing. Amber Riley sang the HELL out of this song, WHEW. Other standouts – Santana and Kurt. Love when he hit his high note. And at the end of it all, Mercedes is standing in the middle of an empty room. Alone.

Mike’s mother “catches” Mike dancing and he lies to her saying it’s for football. She knows better and tell him she doesn’t want to ever do anything to stop him from pursing his dreams. He tells her he auditioned for a part in the school musical and she responds with a line that says SO MUCH about the love for her son, and yet is so simple, and I really commend the writers for this line. She says, “Do you know if we earned that part in the school musical yet?” That one word… “we” says so much. She tells her son she gave up dancing and he grabs his mother’s hand and they dance around the room. It’s very sweet and sentimental, just like the Glee we know and love.

It’s now time for the Diva-Off. Everyone’s excited and anticipating, and Finn is in the wings acting like a stage mom. The two girls sing “Out Here On My Own” but at the end of the performances, Rachel is not happy. She thinks Mercedes was better than her. Realizing she’s not going to get a part in the musical, and scared she won’t achieve anything that will make stand out, Rachel decides to run for president against Brittany. And Kurt. I find it funny that she’d give up on that part so soon, even before officially knowing the answer. Because the answer was: they double-casted the part. Both Rachel and Mercdes will share the performances of Maria. But Mercedes doesn’t want it. So Rachel wins by default. Oh, and she’s still running for President. And again, Rachel becomes unlikeable, this really is getting tiring Mr. Murphy.

Back to Schue and his Ginger Girlfriend, he finally does meet the parents and realizes the reason why she never wanted them to meet is because they’re “Ginger Supremacists.” They don’t like to hang out with non-gingers. And Will finally realizes why Emma is the way she is. It’s because of her awful awful…one more time…AWFUL parents. And it all makes sense now. But that meeting with her parents seems to make Emma regress, but it also makes Will finally stop pushing for her to change, and instead will learn and try to fix her. We end the show with Matthew Morrison singing, “Fix You.” A song that’s been overplayed, probably from the times I’ve repeated Travis Wall’s choreography from So You Think You Can Dance over and over and over again. This song also causes Matthew Morrison to sing in falsetto…please please Glee give him a song in his RANGE.

In the end we find out, Blaine gets the part of Tony, Rachel Gets Maria, Mike gets the part of Riff, and Santana gets Anita. We find out what the Glee Club looks like with Blaine in it, even if Mr. Schue is the lead. And we also find out, Mercedes is joining Shelby’s choir. Called it! Not in this blog post, but in my mind – called it!

Random Thoughts:

Love that Brittany calls the toilet the “magical poop stealing water chair.” I’m going to use that from now on.

Love that Santana calls Kurt “Jimmy Fallon’s butch daughter.”

The only thing that didn’t fit with the “Who Run The World (Girls)” routine was Quinn…seriously. It just didn’t look right in her “delicate” sundress.

Mike Chang – Dang that kid’s got some arms.

Mercedes better not be pregnant.

Now that we know Mike can sing can he sing more please? And more Brittany!

“Spotlight”: This was not the right song for Mercedes. It wasn’t hard hitting enough. Grade C

“Run The World”: Heather Morris rocks my world! Grade: A

“Cool”: Male group dance number, hot Asian guy singing, West Side Story, awesome dance moves. What more can you ask for? Grade A-

“It’s All Over”: Great performance. Amber Riley can really belt it out and it was a great use of the song. Almost perfect. Grade: A-

“Out Here On My Own”: I wish they picked a song that showed their vocal range more. It was just okay. But when they hit those notes of unison – chills! Grade: B

“Fix You”: Glad we finally got a performace by Schue. I wish they added some kind of spin on it. That it was a different arrangement or something. Grade: B+

What did you think of this episode? It wasn’t absolutely amazing (thanks to the Mercedes Story Line) but it was definitely strong. Did you think it was strong? Is Glee back? Are you sick of Mercedes? Are you disappointed in Rachel’s decision to run against Kurt or did you see it coming? Are you creeped out about previews of next week’s episode?

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I agree with you! I am sick of Mercedes and Rachel! Loved the Mike Chang storyline! The Quinn stroyline is also starting to bore me…I think the writers could do better, but this was a great Glee episode! One of the best!